Human Rights

NOVANEWS   By Mike Whitney Is there anything more irritating than listening to US officials blabber about “human rights”? I mean, really, doesn’t it drive you crazy? Here’s Hillary Clinton bashing China for their “deplorable” human rights record, and meanwhile Bradley Manning sits naked and freezing in a 6′ by 8′ cinderblock cell in some far-flung American gulag waiting to get fingernails yanked out. Can you see the hypocrisy? And that’s just for starters. What about Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and the myriad other dungeons, concentration camps and black sites the US has scattered across the planet. Seriously, the United States is the biggest human rights abuser in the world today. No one else even comes close. Clinton’s in no position to be giving other people lectures. Remember, al...

NOVANEWS   Zio-Nazi regime quietly revoked the residency of 140,000 Palestinians living in the West Bank when they left to travel abroad in the years after the 1967 Six Day War According to official documents obtained by HaMoked, an Israeli group which works on Palestinian rights issues, the policy affected Palestinians travelling abroad for work or study in the period between 1967 and 1994 when the Oslo Accords came into effect. Although HaMoked was aware of the procedure, it was never clear how many Palestinians had been affected until recently, when the group got hold of numbers through the Freedom of Information Act, with the story first exposed by the Haaretz newspaper. According to the documents, any Palestinian travelling abroad during that period would have to leave his or ...

NOVANEWS Two things strike you immediately, closely followed by a familiar third. The first is the sheer brazenness of the theft—or, rather, of the thief, who stands before you jeering, smug, sure of his power, eager to hurt. He has already taken some 95% of your family’s land, and now he bullies his way into the tiny patch that is left in order to harass you and humiliate you further, for this evidently gives him joy. Then there is the pure racism, purer perhaps than what one sees anywhere else in the world today. The thief regards you as barely human, an object capable only of feeling pain,though he needs you as his victim, for without you he is incomplete, profoundly frustrated, lonely, unfulfilled. Thus the settler in his Shabbat white, a huge knitted skullcap on his head, takes a peb...

NOVANEWS   Comment by top Palestinian official comes in response to official document quoted by Haaretz, according to which Zionist covertly canceled the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994. Haartez Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Wednesday that Israel’s cancelling of the residency status of 140,000 West Bank Palestinians, as reported by Haaretz, constitutes a war crime and represents an Israeli attempt to affect the demographic composition of the West Bank. Erekat’s comments were in response to a Haaretz report earlier Wednesday that quoted an official Israeli document according to which Israel has used a covert procedure to cancel the residency status of West Bank Palestinians between 1967 and 1994. The document was written after ...

NOVANEWS   THIS IS A TRANSLATION (FROM HEBREW) OF MY LETTER - MAY 5TH 2011 - TO THE MINISTER OF INTERIOR OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL Eli Yishai.  MORDECHAI VANUNU, TEL AVIV, ISRAEL May 5TH 2011   To:  MK Mr. Eli Yishai  Minister of Interior  The State of Israel  Copies to:   PM               B. Netanyho.  FM               A. Liberman  DM               E. Barak  JM                Y. Neeman  President   S. Peres    Re: Revoking my Israeli Citizenship  I am Mordechai Vanunu that was kidnapped from Rome on September 30, 1986 by The Israeli Secret Services.  I  was tried by The Jerusalem District Court and convicted of Aggravated  Espionage, High Treason and Assisting the Enemy and I was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment. This followed an interview I gave to The London Sunday Times regarding th...

NOVANEWS   A recent UN report confirms that at least 1,300 Palestinian children have been killed by Gestapo's forces since the outset of the al-Aqsa uprising in 2000. The United Nations office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a report that 1,335 Palestinian children were shot dead as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks or indiscriminate gun fire by IsraHell soldiers, a Press TV correspondent reported on Saturday. “The international community should offer protection for Palestinian children so that they can have a better social and educational environment,” said Amjad Shawa, Coordinator of Palestinian NGO Network. According to the Palestinian ministry of health, 15 children have been killed in Gaza alone since the beginning of 2011 — three of them while pla...

NOVANEWS   by Saed Bannoura   IMEMC   Palestinian medical sources in occupied East Jerusalem reported Friday that dozens of residents were injured after Israeli soldiers and policemen attacked a protest in Silwan, in occupied East Jerusalem. Two homes caught fire after soldiers fired teargas bombs into them. Jawad Siyam, head of the Wadi Hilwa Information center, reported that the protest started following Friday Prayers, near the protest tent in Silwan. The tent was installed months ago to protest Israeli illegal home demolition policy and settlers’ takeover of Palestinian homes. Local youth placed trash cans in the streets, and burnt tires to prevent the army and the police from reaching them. Some youth also hurled stones at settlers’ vehicles causing damage to the f...

NOVANEWS   Hanin Ahmad Qatamesh   The Electronic Intifada , Last week, on 21 April, Israeli soldiers invaded my home in Ramallah, held hostage all those present, and forced me at gunpoint to call my father, a writer and human rights advocate, in order to demand his surrender. This is common operating procedure for Israeli occupation forces. This time, however, they had taken hostage an American citizen willing to speak out. And I will not be silent. I was born in New York, but raised mainly in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. I currently study in Cairo, but returned to Ramallah to spend my Easter break with my family. My joy soon gave way to heartbreak. Last Wednesday night, just past midnight, my mother and I were chatting when we suddenly heard pounding on the door an...

NOVANEWS   by crescentandcross     by Stephen Lendman The Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations is a Beirut, Lebanon-based organization engaged in “strategic and futuristic studies on the Arab and Muslim worlds, (highlighting) the Palestinian issue.” In spring 2010, it published a Britain-Palestine All Party Parliamentary Group (BPAPPG) study, including the widespread detention of Palestinian children titled, “Under Occupation: A Report on the West Bank,” discussed below. Under military occupation, Palestinian children are treated like adults. Each year, about 700 are arrested, brutally interrogated, and prosecuted in military courts, denying them justice. Since 2000 alone, over 7,000 have been brutalized. On January 31, 2011, 222 Palestinian children w...

NOVANEWS   Nazi Gestapo's Abdul Hamid Abdul Latif Sa’id Abu Haniyeh was beaten up severely before being hit hard by a large jolt of electricity. Following a visit yesterday to some young prisoners being held at the Megiddo Prison, lawyers for the Ministry of Detainees have stated that the young prisoners testified under oath that they had been interrogated and systematically electrocuted and tortured by Israeli intelligence officers in settlements near to Palestinian cities.  According to Salim Redouane who was arrested near Qalqilya on 08.05.2010, he was kept in a camp near Tzofin for 3 hours before being transferred to the settlement of Ariel where he was questioned by Shin Bet interrogators. His head was repeatedly hit against the prison room wall in an effort to get...